The Witcher: Enhanced Edition

It's a highly atmospheric game

So, let's get this out of the way: I'm playing this natively on a Mac Mini 2, purchased in March 2023 and running MacOS 13 Ventura. There's a little glitch where the cursor disappears when the game first launches. You sort of have to fumble around until you highlight one of the splash screen commands (New Game, Load Game, etc...). Once that's going, the cursor reappears you're in and the game runs great. I got this for free from GOG like five years back, probably when The Witcher debuted on Netflix. As for the game itself? I'm playing this right as I'm finishing up The Witcher 3 on PS5, so as you can imagine, there's a little bit of whiplash, quality-wise. That said: Witcher One, if anything, shows how far CD Projekt Red has come. The graphics and characters are servicable at best. Again, this is a 17 year old game, but I kinda of feel like even for that time frame, there was much better out there. Another issue is the combat itself. I didn't quite get what was going in the tutorial. Someone on Reddit pointed out that if you approach this as a point-and-click adventure, it helps immensely. Basically, point at an enemy, left click, and then wait for a second for the game to do it's thing. It's weird, but once I did that, I started moving along. Now that I'm about 30 mintues in, I'm like "Okay, yeah, this story is making up for the techinical limitations." It really is fasciniating to play this and then see whate CDPR wound up a decade later. All of the elements that you interact with in W3 are here in almost embroynic form. I'm not sure if I'll finish this or not. This game has a rep for being janky and it's well deserved. I also just bought Witcher 2 and everything (UI, gameplay, art) is just light years beyond the first one. It's literally a much more enjoyable process. If you can get this cheap, it's worth getting just to experience a piece of gaming history, if nothing else.

This game gets a lot of very good reviews but not from me. I am sorry to say I didn't make it past the first part. After a video start you are in a castle where the sword trainers are discussing pirouettes and their usage. I am not an expert but I am sure their usage in sword fighting is a little less than never. Am I in a dancing class or a fighting class. Certainly not an acting class because he voice acting is, well, as bad as pirouetting during a sword fight. This is closely followed by my first taste of real combat where my character runs around like a lunatic holding his sword as high in air as he can whilst the screen tells me I am attacking too fast. How can I be too fast, they have no armour and I have a big sword. One hit should be enough. I missed this game first time round. Some people really like it. Maybe it gets a lot better later on but I don't think I am going to find out. I always wondered what I missed out on. From my couple of hours (yes, that is how long it took me to slice up a few unarmoured ruffians) I believe I missed out on shockingly bad voice acting, strange graphics choices and some really bad controls that just made it unplayable for me. I thought this would be akin to the elder scrolls but I just found it to be a dumbed down version.

I have only one grip with this game - combat. Man, did it take me a while to get used to. But the rest is freaking incredible. I especially praise the developers for the atmosphere. Every location felt unique. They put so much soul into their work. Granted, the plot is like a B or even a C movie. The voice acting is awkward. But none of that put me off the game. I enjoyed every minute of the journey with Geralt of Rivia, as we slayed monsters, completed contracts and tried figuring out what those damned Salamandras were up to. The game is also littered with references to the books. Each warmed my heart, especially the story behind the silver sword we get later on. Although for the love of god, why did they have to be so cryptic about Yen and Ciri? Like they weren't sure if they would ever focus on them later on. Overall, the first Witcher is, in my humble opinion, is a piece of art. I enjoyed it immensely. Thank you for all the hours of fun, CDPR!

it's a good game and i'm happy i played it, i still have fond memories of it but nothing will ever make me replay it, i still have nightmares about all the backtracking, the combat might have taken some some time to get used to and the "sex scenes" are just erotic gwent cards but the backtracking is what truly sticks in my mind, a decade after i played it i still remember more than half my time in the game being running back and forth between areas far apart, later on you get a teleport so it gets a little bit better but still god damn. even with that i would still recommend it